8o BIOGRAPHICAL [CHAP. XL 



anything definite about the matter, if there were an assistant. 

 I have my own circle of helpers, my own paid special referee, 

 by whom I reach specialists out of my circle, and my lady 

 amanuensis in the house, besides my good sister's invaluable 

 aid always promptly and ably given. So long as I can 

 I hope to keep my work in my own hands, and if it were 

 not for the great masses sometimes sent me, which come 

 because I have been (up to the present time) the only 

 Official Entomologist here, the work would not have been 

 so distressing. Professor Harker is, I believe, excellently 

 qualified to hold a good and high entomological post, but 

 not even Professor Riley or Professor Westwood would 

 \vork a post without referees. Some day, I hope, he may 

 be high in office ; then he will, as I do now, have his 

 organised corresponding staff." 



" As a meteorological observer, while living at Isleworth 

 my work consisted in taking notes on about eighteen 

 different subjects once a day, beginning at 9 a.m., Green- 

 wich time precisely. These included taking the readings 

 of the maximum and minimum temperatures, and also 

 those other thermometrical conditions, as of dry and wet 

 bulb, solar, earth, and ground thermometers, &c. ; likewise 

 of rainfall in the past four-and-twenty hours, of the state 

 of weather at the time ; the nature of the clouds, with the 

 amount and direction of them, and likewise the direction 

 and estimated speed of wind. The time occupied out-of- 

 doors in the observations was about twenty minutes, to 

 which had to be added the barometrical reading with that 

 of the attached thermometers, with corrections according 

 to tables furnished for altitude of the barometer, and such 

 minute errors in record of the thermometers as were shown 

 by tables of error furnished by comparison with the in- 

 struments at the Royal Observatory, Kew. Altogether the 

 work required some considerable amount of time, and also 

 most scrupulous attention to accuracy, not to say some 

 amount of personal self-denial, as whatever the weather 

 might be at 9 a.m. the work had to be done. Perhaps 

 there would be a thunderstorm, or at other times cold so 

 great that my fingers almost froze to the instruments, as 

 on one occasion, when the thermometer registered nearly 

 down to zero." 



Professor Westwood belonged to the good old academic 

 type of scholar who made the responses in church in Latin. 

 He was, till his death, Miss Ormerod's mentor from her 



